String Quartet No. 3 (Beethoven)

The String Quartet No. 3 in D major, op. 18, No. 3, was written by Ludwig van Beethoven between 1798 and 1800 and published in 1801. Although it is numbered third, it was the first quartet Beethoven composed. It consists of four movements:

1. Allegro
2. Andante con moto
3. Allegro
4. Presto

According to Steinberg, this is "the gentlest, most consistently lyrical work [within Beethoven's Op. 18]", except for the fourth movement, in which "Beethoven first explores the idea of shifting the center of gravity toward the end of a multimovement work."

References

• Robert Winter, Robert Martin eds. (1994). The Beethoven Quartet Companion. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-08211-7.; especially the essay by Michael Steinberg (pp. 159–163)

External links

• Free scores by String Quartet No. 3 at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)
• Performance of String Quartet no. 3 by the Borromeo String Quartet from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in MP3 format